The Battle for Wesnoth

I especially like the carry-over mechanic, too many strategy games make each level self-contained, whereas here you get to keep your units (and their experience points) and gold for further levels in a campaign. Units advance to higher classes when they gain a level, and each unit even has personality traits which slightly affect its performance.

But my one problem with the game are those campaigns: they don’t feel interesting enough, they’re fairly generic. Elves defending an orc invasion, a guy rescuing his brother from orcs, and so on — nothing particularly interesting or thoughtful in the scenarios, they’re just kind of there. It often feels like playing a generic fantasy novel.

The gameplay is still addictive enough to make up for that, though. There’s a ton of content and depth to this, it’s a game you can play hundreds of hours of and still occasionally learn a new trick or tactic.

My only problem with the gameplay is that it relies too much on randomness, which makes saving and loading until you get a result you like the optimal (in some levels, the only) strategy. Some luck is fine, but luck plays a huge role in this game in determining success or failure, far more than your puny strategies do.

Battle for Wesnoth was a pretty fun game at first, but then it got a bit tedious when I found myself relating most of the campaigns on other, more well-known titles.

The game mechanics, which I think most can agree on, are very realistic. Campaign scenarios allow your previously deployed units (in previous campaigns) to be deployed again at the same level and stats. This allows you to create a specialised team to allow you to complete harder missions further along the campaign.

Replayability, is BfW’s forte here. With a massive unit list you’ll often be rerunnign campaigns or local games to uncover the units that you’ve missed out on. BfW also supports a thriving multiplayer network, which you can build up your tacital prowess on other players.

Battle for Wesnoth is undoubtedly a have on your PC – with an ever-growing community and player-made expansions, you can edit your copy with different ages and units.

So, what are you waiting for? An orc invasion?